


Toward the End

by dracoqueen22



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post 2007 Film, Tactile Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Light years away, Vortex receives a transmission that gives proof to what he's suspected all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toward the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dellessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dellessa/gifts).



> For dellessa and her flash fiction prompt of Jazz/Vortex. You wanted G1 and I wrote Bayverse. Author!Fail. 
> 
> “It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”  
> ― Rose Kennedy

The transmission comes from light years away. Blast Off is the one to pick it up, but Swin gets the dubious honor of delivering it before he scurries off like the coward he is.  
  
Only Onslaught sticks around, his visor and mask unreadable. There's an empty spot at the table where Brawl should have been for commiserating duty.  
  
Vortex turns the datachip over and over in his fingers. He's got a good guess at the contents and there's a weird reluctance to actually view them, as though that simple act will make the truth real.  
  
His free hand reaches for the high grade, downing half of it in one gulp. It burns all the way down, hits his tanks, makes his internals churn. His processor swims in the midst of denial.  
  
 _“Nice rotors.”  
  
Vortex laughs, turning to look at the smaller grounder with the shiny paint but muted colors. “Ya can touch 'im if you like,” he offers.  
  
The grounder smirks. “Wow. And here I thought I'd have to try harder.”  
  
Vortex gives him an appraising glance. Good, clean lines. Retracted energy field. Just enough of a mysterious aura. Could be worth a tumble or two. “I'm easy.”  
  
“I noticed,” the grounder drawls.  
  
Vortex lets his rotors twitch, just for the fun of it, and though the mech has a visor, Vortex knows he's watching them move. “Gonna touch 'em or not?” he goads with a leer.  
  
Whisper-quiet steps brings the grounder closer as he tilts his helm. “Dunno. Seems kinda dangerous.”  
  
Vortex chuckles, leaning closer, helms taller than the mech. “You have no idea,” he purrs._  
  
“How reliable is our communications net?” Vortex asks.  
  
Onslaught doesn't so much as twitch. “Enough to know that is the truth and not some element of Autobot propaganda.”  
  
Vortex cycles a careful ventilation and resigns himself to reality. He pops open a panel on his forearm, revealing the tiny dataport. Ignoring the existence of the chip isn't going to make the truth any different.  
  
“Vortex.”  
  
He pauses, looking up at his commander.  
  
“Do I need to remind you of our current circumstances?”  
  
His lips twist into a sneer. Vortex's optics land on the chip again, turning it over and over in his fingers. “I'll behave.”  
  
“See you that you do.”  
  
Panel open, Vortex reaches for the high grade again, downing the rest of it and signaling for another. He wants to be properly overcharged by the time he's through.  
  
“Then can I get some fragging privacy?”  
  
Onslaught's response is a single syllable before his commander turns to leave. He doesn't go far. Vortex can still feel the weight of his stare. But the illusion of privacy is what matters.  
  
He's been relying on illusion far too much lately.  
  
 _“You're an idiot.”  
  
Jazz tilts his helm, a grin on his lips that makes Vortex want to lean down and bite it away. “Yeah, so you keep saying.”  
  
Vortex's hands curl into fists. “Prime's a peace-lovin' hypocrite,” he snarls.  
  
“And Megatron's two circuits short of a motherboard,” Jazz retorts, leaning hard against the railing, not caring about the thirty storey drop behind him. “I'll take hypocrite over crazy any orn.”  
  
“You're only going to get yourself scrapped,” Vortex argues.  
  
Jazz smirks with the same lazy confidence that had intrigued Vortex vorns ago, and infuriated him all the same. “Could come with me.”  
  
“Frag that!”  
  
Jazz's expression doesn't change, but something in his field shifts. “S'what I thought.”_  
  
Vortex stops fiddling with the datachip. A server stops by, picks up his empty cube and deposits another, churning with a dark violet high grade. Maybe it'll be enough.  
  
He leaves it for now, cycles a ventilation, and clicks the datachip into place.  
  
It's a transmission from Starscream, informing all Decepticons within range of what has happened on a tiny little mudball on the distant edge of the galaxy.  
  
Megatron is dead. Who cares?  
  
Brawl's gone, but the Combaticons already knew that. They knew the very moment his spark was snuffed, felt it reverberate and tug across their gestalt quasi-bond.  
  
Bonecrusher's scrap. The Structies are going to blow a gasket if they haven't already. Crusher was supposed to be the strongest of them.  
  
No one cares about Blackout except maybe Barricade and that slagger's missing-in-action.  
  
Starscream's survived, no surprise there.  
  
The Allspark's destroyed. Oh, well.  
  
One Autobot casualty.  
  
Vortex's spark contracts before he can clamp down on a reaction. He grinds his denta, feels his composure crackling on the edges. There's a warning through the bond, Onslaught giving a not-so-subtle shove at his subordinate.  
  
Vortex disconnects the chip, sets it on the table with a barely audible click. He stares at the small piece of metal, barely bigger than a fingertip. He had known, before confirmation, the contents. He doesn't approve of confirmation.  
  
 _He brings the cuffs but somehow, Vortex is the one on his back, chained to the berth. His rotors rattle, whumping against the soft covering, straining to move. Heat coils inside of him like a rabid turbofox.  
  
Jazz straddles him, hands buried in Vortex's substructure, fingers coiled around cables and wires, stroking over sensitive lines and pinching a sensor nexus. Vortex can't stop writhing, stop moaning. His vents work double-time, but he can't get cool.  
  
“Ask me nicely and I'll let you overload,” Jazz purrs, visor flashing, cool as the sea of rust and unruffled.  
  
“Frag you!” Vortex snarls and thrashes beneath the grounder, whose weight is not enough to pin him down, instead riding each buck and twist of Vortex's frame.  
  
He howls his pleasure as Jazz takes hold of a motor line and pulls.  
  
Jazz leans down, their faceplates inches apart, ex-vents smothering Vortex in heated gusts. “Or I could keep you like this for joors,” he murmurs with silken vocals that vibrate through Vortex's chassis. “Fry your circuits. Your sensors. Wouldn't mind that either.”  
  
He's smug, too proud of himself. He wants Vortex to beg, but he doesn't do that. He resists, trapped on the precipice, a pain as addicting as pleasure.  
  
“Your choice,” Jazz says and the promise in his visor makes Vortex whimper in the best kinds of ways._  
  
Vortex's fist smashes against the tabletop, shattering the chip into dust. The table itself barely survives, an impression of his punch left behind in the cheap metal.  
  
“Sorry, Tex,” Swindle whispers across the comm.  
  
“No, you're not,” Vortex snaps and ruthlessly blocks off any other communications from his teammates.  
  
Not a one of them are sorry. They are all waiting for him to snap, to get them kicked off this rock like so many other temporary sanctuaries they've inhabited over the vorns. To be fair that incident on Talryx VII was not his fault at all.  
  
They really need to give him more credit.  
  
 _Once upon a time, a gun pointed at Vortex's helm would have been a standing invitation for an interface. Now, it's a threat and one he doesn't take lightly._  
  
 _“Don't make me pull this trigger, Tex,” Jazz says, his vocals rippling with chilling intent and restrained emotion. “Just turn around and walk away.”_  
  
 _Vortex holds up his hands, trying to look harmless, ignoring the blaring alarms around him, and the grey Decepticon frames littering the floor. Look here? See? Just an innocent little rotary out for a midnight stroll..._  
  
 _“Wondered when it would come to this,” he says with a grin, ignoring the pings from both Onslaught and the base's commander. No Autobots here, no sir. “Looks like Prime made ya his little assassin already.”_  
  
 _Jazz's helm tilts down, his grip unwavering. “It's not like that.”_  
  
 _“Isn't it?” Vortex makes a pointed effort to look around him, at the energon-slick floor, the bomb planted against the energy core. “Could've fooled me.”_  
  
 _Jazz snarls, the alarms painting lurid lines across his glossy black armor, a disguise to match the one he wore all those vorns ago. “You're in no position to judge me, interrogator.”_  
  
 _“I learned from the best after all,” Vortex purrs._  
  
 _Tick, tick, tick, goes the bomb, ticking down to inevitable doom. Will they stand here like this, Vortex wonders, locked in a standstill, until the explosion destroys them along with the base?_  
  
 _Vortex's lips curl into a smirk. Onslaught's orders shriek through his comms, his audials. But Vortex has all the patience in the world._  
  
 _“Your move,” he says to his once upon a time lover. And Vortex waits._  
  
 _Tick, tick, tick._  
  
Vortex snatches the high grade off the table, drains it all in one large gulp, and slams the empty container on the table. It shatters, joining the dust of the chip.  
  
Frag.  
  
He jerks a handful of creds from a thigh panel, scattering them across the tabletop. For the service and the damage both. He's getting soft in his old age.  
  
Vortex lurches to his pedes, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. The past is dead, gone. There's no changing it, no going back and right now, doesn't fragging look like there's much of a future either.  
  
Vortex has survived worse. Much worse. He'll survive this, too.  
  
He flicks his comms back on, ignores Swindle's half-sparked condolences, and focuses instead on Onslaught's last contact. His commander is still around here somewhere, watching and waiting.  
  
“Let's get out of here, boss,” Vortex says. “I'm sick of this place.”  
  
Blast Off mutters something like approval. That he doesn't bother with commiseration is telling in itself.  
  
“And where do you suggest we go? Back to Cybertron?” Onslaught doesn't bother to hide the disdain in his tone.  
  
It lingers, also, behind his commander's question. Do you want to go across the universe? Do you want to find some backwater mudball? Do you want to answer Starscream's call?  
  
Frag that, too.  
  
“Anywhere but here,” Vortex replies, and he cuts off his comm.  
  
Onslaught's gonna agree. He's got no doubt about that. They're all bored out of their processors here, itching to get back into the scrap, to do something with themselves. And whether it's back to Monacus where Swin keeps saying he's got some deal or another, or off to another Neutral outpost, Vortex doesn't care.  
  
There's nothing left for him out in the universe anymore.  


 

****


End file.
